caa a22 4500 378914855 CHVBK 20180305123550.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161128e20041124xx s 000 0 eng 10.1515/jall.2004.25.2.127 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)gruyter-10.1515/jall.2004.25.2.127 Olawsky Knut J. 1. Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, La Trobe University. What is a noun? What is an adjective? Problems of classification in Dagbani [Elektronische Daten] [Knut J. Olawsky] It is widely acknowledged that all languages have a class of adjectives that can be formally or functionally distinguished from other word classes. This article deals with the differences between nouns and adjectives in Dagbani, a Gur language spoken in Ghana. Remarkably, a three-way distinction is required in order to account for the different types. Specifically, Dagbani appears to have two classes whose members can take the functions typically assigned to adjectives. Their major role is to modify a noun, whereas nouns themselves cannot modify each other. The distinction between nouns and adjectives and between the two types of adjectives is based on morphological and syntactic factors: while Type A adjectives behave exactly like canonical nouns from a morphological point of view, Type B resemble loans in that they lack any kind of morphological complexity. However, on the syntactic level, Type B words are more similar to nouns than Type A are. This article investigates the relation between the three different word types and aims at an account of their classification. © Walter de Gruyter Grammar, syntax, linguistic structure nationallicence Phonetics, phonology, prosody nationallicence Journal of African Languages and Linguistics Walter de Gruyter 25/2(2004-11-24), 127-148 0167-6164 25:2<127 2004 25 jall https://doi.org/10.1515/jall.2004.25.2.127 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1515/jall.2004.25.2.127 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Olawsky Knut J. 1. Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, La Trobe University NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Journal of African Languages and Linguistics Walter de Gruyter 25/2(2004-11-24), 127-148 0167-6164 25:2<127 2004 25 jall CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-gruyter